


The Kind of Lost that Always Ends Up Fixing Itself, In the End

by justshortof



Category: Scream (TV)
Genre: Drama, Emrey, F/F, Friends to Lovers, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-07
Updated: 2016-07-07
Packaged: 2018-07-22 01:13:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7412662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justshortof/pseuds/justshortof
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“The years have all spun away now, and it’s just them again. It’s just Emma. Maybe, it’s always been just her.”</p><p>A dangerous incident forces Audrey and Emma to face a new, darker Lakewood—and to reevaluate where it is they truly stand after all these years. Emrey.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Kind of Lost that Always Ends Up Fixing Itself, In the End

**Author's Note:**

> One-shot. Emrey. Takes place in the wake of the murders, between Seasons 1 and 2.
> 
> Thank you to anyone who comments, bookmarks, leaves kudos, or just simply reads; it means a lot!

It’s not until after, really.

It’s when Piper’s body is being cremated somewhere in upstate New York, and Riley Marra’s mom is starting a Tuesday night support group for parents, and Brooke’s dad is hiring an architect to design the monument. It’s right around then. That’s when looking at Emma starts to feel weird again.

It’s like they’re back to that first night, at Brooke’s—the pool area lit up all softly, the chlorine settling into the air, the water that Gatorade-blue color, like a waterpark at night, right as the last people are leaving. It’s like looking at Emma that night, in the chlorine-air, thinking, _when did this happen?_

Except now, people are dead, and so talking about any of it just seems like a shit idea.

 

She changed her room.

It’s softer now, all light-washed picture frames and plants with fake, mint green leaves, all Easter-egg-colored binders and electric candles that don’t even smell—all shades that someone at Home Depot convinced Maggie were “neutral” and “calming.”

Right now, the room is having the opposite effect on Audrey. She misses the days when the walls were that dark, warm purple, plastered with posters of movies Emma had never seen and bands she’d never listened to. She misses when everything was draped with those cheap, white lights, and clothes matted the floor of the closet, which was always open.

At first, Emma doesn’t mention the new room—just pads across the carpet, slings her jacket over a chair, and flops onto the bed. At the sight of it, Audrey’s chest feels funny. This is like a moment from the Old Times, she realizes—back when standing here was just like standing in her own house, back when standing in her own house actually felt like standing in a real home.

At first, Audrey thinks that maybe Emma hasn’t realized. Maybe, it’s been ages since she re-designed. Maybe, she’s slung countless jackets and flopped onto this same bed in this same room countless times in the presence of people like Brooke and Riley and Will, and she’s forgotten that, for the past three years, Audrey wasn’t one of those people.

But then, lying on her stomach in the middle of the bed, Emma asks, “You like it?”

Audrey stands in the doorway, her body still feeling a little rigid, a little quivery. “Th-the room?”

Emma nods.

“Yeah,” Audrey lies.

Emma snorts and rolls over on her back, looking up at the bright-white ceiling. “It’s boring,” she groans, “You can say it.”

“No, no—”

“I thought I needed something new, after…after everything, you know? It was just hard to look at my old room.”

“I get it,” Audrey murmurs, feeling like an asshole, but then Emma says, “This room doesn’t feel right either, though. Sometimes, I miss the old one.”

“I get it,” Audrey says again, before realizing this was exactly her last response. She makes a stuttering noise that amounts to nothing, then shuts up.

Emma chuckles, sort of half-heartedly. “But, whatever, it’s just a room, right? What I just said probably sounded melodramatic as hell,” she mutters.

“We’re the survivors of shit so fucked-up, it only happens in movies," Audrey snorts, "Anything we say—anything honest, at least—is going to sound melodramatic as hell.” Audrey’s not sure where the words come from, all confident and spotless and poetic. They feel like lines. She’s never said anything this smooth in front of Emma. She’s never said anything this smooth, period.

Audrey’s still weighing the words in her mouth when Emma snorts, quirks an eyebrow, and says, “Now that—what you just said— _that_ was melodramatic as hell.”

For a moment, Audrey is speechless. Emma keeps quiet too, looking down at her fingers playing with the corner of a quilt. It’s like the moment after a bold, loud joke in a quiet room. But then, Emma’s eyes start to glisten, and the sides of her lips start to twitch—and they both start to laugh, hard. Eyes still watery, Audrey pads over the new carpet, slings her jacket over Emma’s, and flops down beside her on the bed.

 

 _The Notebook_ is on, the uncensored HBO version of it where Noah is practically groping Allie in that doorstep scene at the beginning. “I’m telling you, he like grabs her boobs and everything there—you’ve never noticed that?” Audrey is saying, and Emma is laughing, “No, I have never noticed that, because it doesn’t happen.”

“That’s because you’ve watched the ABC Family version of this movie too many times. Emma, I swear, that scene gets hot and heavy.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Emma snorts.

It’s early yet in the movie; Noah is hanging from the Ferris wheel, Allie is screaming in that fake-terrified-but-secretly-satisfied teenage girl kind of way. Emma mutes the sound for a moment and turns over on her side. Audrey’s breath catches at the proximity of it all. They’ve been lying at the edge of the bed on their stomachs—arms folded to cradle their heads, brushing elbows with each other. Now, Emma’s whole face is just inches away, looking right at the side of Audrey’s.

Taking a breath that she hopes only she can tell is heavier, Audrey twists over to face Emma. She keeps her eyes level with Emma’s, eyebrows raised as playfully as she can make them right now, with her pulse thudding hard on her neck.

It’s strange to think that, out of everything, this feeling right here is the only one of the whole night that Audrey’s sure is charted territory. If only briefly, this feeling—this hold-your-breath, try-not-to-look-at-Emma’s-lips feeling—made its appearance in the Old Times. It was right before the end of the Emma Era, right around the time when blackheads were prickling their way down Audrey’s back like a fucking ant colony and Emma’s hair was developing enough shine to qualify her as a Pantene spokesmodel. That feeling was definitely there—confusing and disappointing, but fucking there.

She spent a long time denying this to herself, of course—especially after Emma stopped meeting her eyes in the hallways, after Audrey started hating Emma and Nina Patterson and all of fucking Lakewood. The truth is, Audrey hated herself for still loving a girl like Emma Duval almost as much as she hated herself for always thinking, in the very back of her mind, that maybe this was her fault. Maybe, Emma only left because she knew about Audrey. Maybe, she left because she was sick of having a best friend that she couldn’t even sleep next to without having her lips stared at 24/7, a best friend who she couldn’t talk to about Brian Latimer or Matt Owens or Mitchel Vaughn without having to ignore a wince—a stupid, sad, longing wince.

But if Emma was that observant, or Audrey was that unsubtle, it’s not showing now, because Emma is talking, yanking Audrey out of her reverie. “I wouldn’t ask just any girl that likes girls this, but I’m curious …”

“Shoot,” Audrey tries to chuckle.

“Is it weird—watching movies like this?”

“You mean, watching two straight people fall in love?” Audrey snorts.

Emma considers this more seriously than Audrey expected her to. “Sort of, I guess. I don’t really know what I meant now.”

“Is it weird for you to watch _Rent_ or _Orange is the New Black_?”

“No,” Emma says, more decisively now, “No, it’s not, but that’s not really what I meant.”

Audrey waits, still holding her breath a little bit.

“Is it weird when movies and shows and everything just don’t even acknowledge it? Like, the whole sexuality spectrum thing? I mean, at least in _Rent_ , you’ve got Roger and Mimi. In _Orange is the New Black_ , there’s Piper and Larry. It’s not like everyone is just gay. But, like, this movie here—it might as well exist in a world where being straight is it, you know? Disney Channel—I mean, literally, that entire _channel_ just ignores anything but heterosexuality.”

Audrey laughs at that.

“I mean, do you ever think about how many characters probably might have been bi, if their stories weren’t all about falling in love with a straight person?” Emma presses. Honestly, she’s more serious about this than Audrey’s chest and lungs and lips can handle right now.

“ _Think_ about it?” Audrey manages to chuckle, “I stay up every night reading nothing but fanfiction about it.”

Emma snorts loudly, and then rolls over on her back.

She looks at the bright-white ceiling and sighs, “Yeah, well, I guess it just all depends on who your story is about.”

Audrey starts to say, _And you called_ me _melodramatic._ For some reason, though, she just stays quiet. She watches Noah mutely grope Allie on the screen, while Emma stares up at the ceiling, and Audrey doesn’t say anything.

 

The Lakewood Market is technically a Shurfine. New people in town—not that there are ever a lot of those, not since the press died out anyway—will sometimes say they’re going to the “Shurfine,” and locals will usually know what they mean, but that’s about it. To everyone else, it is and always has been just the Lakewood Market.

The food is overpriced, and it’s a fact understood amongst most groups—except maybe the really old people, who don’t care what they eat and just don’t like to drive far—that the macaroni and potato salads are more likely to be spoiled than not. The walls reek of mildew, the lights flicker, and there are no lines for parking in the front lot. Not that they’re really needed. No one bulk-shops at the Lakewood Market. You go there when you’ve just broken open a box of brownie mix without looking for vegetable oil in the pantry first or when the drug store closed at 5 and you’ve got a raging migraine. It’s shit like that that keeps the place running.

The cashier is an underclassmen from Washington—a sophomore, maybe. He’s the only one working, it looks like, which is probably illegal in some way or another. He’s not even at the cash register when Emma and Audrey come in. Instead, he’s shifting milk around in the dairy aisle.

Emma full-on smiles at him, all warm eyes and crinkled dimples, and Audrey’s too busy watching her to do anything with her own face. It’s not right, Audrey thinks. These days, Emma smiles at everyone in town, and everyone in town just nods back. Audrey looks away before she has to watch Emma grimace.

The frozen section is just across from the dairy products, where the sophomore keeps rearranging milk. When they first came into the store, the kid was actually stocking it and shit, but now it seems like he’s just awkwardly shuffling it around in their presence, not wanting to turn away and have to meet their eyes.

“I think we need some milk,” Audrey says, loud and hard.

Emma looks down at the ground while the sophomore rigidly turns away and brushes past them.

“We don’t need milk,” Emma says, quietly though, as if she pretty much knows why Audrey said it.

There is a sale on Perry’s Ice Cream, three jugs for ten bucks. “We don’t need three of those!” Emma laughs as Audrey immediately swings open the freezer door with the sign on it.

“The key word there is ‘need,’” Audrey snorts, digging to the back for the last of the Panda Paws. “You can pick the other two: I’m good for the night.”

Emma grabs a Black Raspberry and begins to scan over the other flavors—

“Look at you, alive and in the flesh.”

Just like that, an old, crackly voice breaks up the cold, flickery aisle. Emma jerks, almost dropping the Black Raspberry, and they both turn to see an old woman a few feet away. She’s small and worn-out, maybe a little by life but mostly by drugs. Her hair is gray and snarly, her lips chapped, her eyes hollowed-out. She’s wearing a stained souvenir shirt from the Caribbean, bagging-over shorts, and dirty crocks. Veins carve their way hard through her calves. Her left hand shakes uncontrollably.

The old woman stares hard at them—at Emma, really. She stares hard and bitterly.  

“Excuse me?” Emma stutters, instinctively taking a step away. Audrey’s hand finds Emma’s back.

The woman scoffs. “You don’t know me. Why would you?”

Suddenly, Audrey does though. It’s something in the way the woman’s face crinkles up that jogs a memory in Audrey’s head, a glimpse of a TV screen a month or two ago. It was a mother being interviewed about her son, a twenty-two year-old who’d been killed in a fishing accident or something.

“Emma, let’s go,” Audrey murmurs.

“God, you’re so pretty,” the woman says, voice uneven, eyes watery. Then, gravely, “Not a single scar.”

Emma’s hand goes to her stomach. For a split second, Audrey thinks she’s preparing to raise her shirt as proof, but then Emma just clutches at it hard—subconsciously, maybe.

“You don’t know anything about me,” Emma breathes.

The woman cackles, taking a step forward, and Audrey moves around Emma. “We don’t want any trouble,” she says, loud and evenly.

At this, the woman’s eyes grow wide and clear. She doesn’t move any closer. For a moment, Audrey thinks that she’s broken the trance, that the woman is about to stumble backwards, apologize, start whimpering over her son—but then, softly and lightly, the woman whispers, “You’ll die too, Honey.”

Audrey’s body goes cold.

“You’ll die just like those other kids, or just like my son, or you’ll die in a car accident, or from old age, or of cancer like your mom eventually will”—Audrey gasps, Emma lurches forward, and the woman jolts back, mockingly. “What are you going to do, Sweetheart? Kill me?” The woman steps closer to Emma, closer and closer, and Audrey sees it happening, but something is stone inside of her right now. Suddenly, the woman is right there, inches from Emma’s face, her nicotine-breath lingering between them. Audrey is still clutching Emma’s back.

Eye-to-eye with Emma, the woman whispers, “I’m already dead. Just like your friend, and those kids, and those families, and everyone in this whole town who is not you.”

What happens next is all so fast. Emma lunges forward, and Audrey sees the woman grapple at her side for something, what Audrey doesn't even realize is a gun, hidden in the bags of her shorts, until she’s tearing Emma back and propelling herself forward into the woman. Audrey slams her down onto the floor, hard, and the gun skids across the tiles. “Pick it up!” She screams, but Emma is frozen, her eyes wide and terrified, her body closing down on her.

It doesn’t matter, anyway. The woman isn’t struggling beneath her, just lying there groaning and clutching at her temples. Sophomore is at the end of the aisle now, staring down at the two of them and then at the gun. “Pick it up!” Audrey screams at him this time, and he quickly jolts back into his body, scrambling over to the gun.

“Call 9-1-1!” She screams at the kid.

At that, he jerks, nods, and pulls out his phone. When he’s done talking to the police, Audrey shifts to push her knee into the back of the woman, who is just lying there, conscious but totally empty in the head. Audrey starts to say, _Kid, this ice cream better be free_ , like it’s a movie scene, like everything is okay. But Sophomore would be too zoned-out to notice, and Emma is on the floor now, clutching her knees and crying, and Audrey doesn’t say anything.

 

It’s nearly eleven at night now. They’re in that little police station seating room, waiting for Sophomore to get done with his interview. Audrey’s sitting on a chair, and Emma’s on the ground in front of her, arms interlocked with Audrey’s legs. Audrey can feel her shaking still.

Maggie is talking to Acosta in some back room, and Audrey’s dad had a sermon to prepare for. He showed up, signed a paper, kissed them both on the head, and left. Emma rubbed Audrey’s leg comfortingly when that all happened, and Audrey let her think she needed the comforting. Maybe, she used to, back in the Old Times, but now this is just normal. The truth is, talking with her dad is more trouble and pain than it’s worth, and she’s long since accepted this as an everyday truth, just another part of the same code that says not to talk about her mom and to nod occasionally when Noah rants and, up until recently, to not meet Emma’s eyes in the hallway.

Now, it’s just her, Emma, and Sophomore’s mom, whose eyes are red and puffy from crying. The woman is glaring at them almost disgustedly, but Audrey is too tired to fight anymore. She just moves her leg over Emma’s shoulder, encouraging Emma to rest her head on it, hoping she doesn’t look up.

 

“Are you awake?”

Emma’s voice is so soft, as if just another part of this “neutral, calming” room. Audrey knows better, though. She can hear the trembles underneath it.

“Yeah,” Audrey croaks, rolling onto her back. In her peripherals, she notices that Emma is in the same position, head and back flat down on the mattress, eyes looking blankly up at the ceiling. It’s as if she hasn’t closed them all night.

Emma’s breathing is shallow, like little hiccups. It reminds Audrey of another night, three years ago, when the walls were purple, and midnight was late, and Emma looked up at the ceiling and whispered, “I was such an idiot to go out with him.” Emma laid there thinking about Brian Latimer, and Audrey laid there thinking about Emma, wanting to brush the hair out of her face and the tears off of her cheeks, wanting to pull Emma against her chest and draw circles on her shoulders.

Audrey steals a sideways peak at Emma, only to catch sight of the glimmer in the corner of her eye.

“You don’t think … what that woman said, you don’t think …?” Emma trails off, her voice getting heavier.

“Emma, she was doped up to the max,” Audrey snorts—tries to, anyway—but her voice comes out light and soft.

“Yeah,” Emma murmurs.

For a moment, they both just keep looking up at the ceiling—the same one that was bright-white and clean and soft a few hours ago, but is all gray, dancing shadows right now, warped every so often by a car passing outside. “It won’t be like this forever, Em,” Audrey whispers.

“Yeah.”

And Emma doesn’t say anything else, but Audrey can hear it in the silence, could hear it at the viewings, at the school assembly, at the town meeting for the monument. Hell, Audrey could hear it in that empty, mildew market just hours ago. _Yeah. Maybe it won’t be like_ this _forever—as in, maybe, I won’t have to worry about psychotic cocaine addicts killing me in deserted markets forever, but what about the rest of it? What about the kids who won’t meet my eyes in the hallways? What about the customers who purposely wait longer in the other cashier’s line, because they don’t want to look at me? What about all the parents who didn’t hug me at the viewings, who held the rest of their kid’s friends so hard, but just touched my hand like it was ice-cold? When does_ that _stop, huh?_

Audrey swallows hard. She doesn’t know.

Then, Emma whispers, “How is your mom, Audrey?”

Any other night, these words would cause the air to get stuck in Audrey's throat. Noah knows that, her dad knows that—anyone who has been around for the past few years knows that. But because it’s Emma, and because her breaths still sound like little hiccups, and Audrey still wants to draw circles on her shoulder, she hears herself saying, “She’s alright. She’s been asking about you.”

It’s true, too. Audrey’s mom never stopped asking about Emma, not even before the murders, when there was nothing to ask about and hadn’t been for a long time. Audrey used to think it was just a dying-mom-thing, that anybody who watches their kid grow up from a hospital bed is going to hang onto the Old Times, the old memories, the old friends. But now, Audrey thinks that, maybe, her mom could see in it her eyes during their visits, could see that Audrey was the kind of lost that always ends up fixing itself, in the end.

“She must hate me after how I treated you.”

Audrey chuckles. “What? No, Emma, she doesn’t hate you. She—well, God, you know my mom—she _loves_ you. Always has.”

“Good,” Emma breathes.

And then, suddenly, Emma is crying. And everything is so much realer and sharper than it was a moment ago. “I’m sorry about your mom, Audrey,” she sobs. She gasps for air and, when she can’t find it, she sits up quickly, pulling her knees into her chest.

Audrey snaps up too, her arms instantly wrapping around Emma’s shaking body. “Emma, no, don’t—it’s okay, she knows—”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there when she got sick,” Emma is sobbing, “I’m sorry I stopped being your friend. I’m sorry we never talk about Rachel, or your mom, or all the shit that went down between us. I just—”

“Emma, stop! It’s okay—God, I— _fuck_ —please don’t cry—”

And then Emma’s lips are on hers.

Just like that, Emma Duval is kissing her, and Audrey’s hands are clutching at her waist, nails digging into soft, powdery white skin, legs spidering their way around Emma’s knees, cheeks burning with Emma’s tears. It’s like a dream from the Old Times, except, when Audrey reaches up to run her hands through Emma’s hair, it’s not Pantene spokesmodel hair, it’s just hair—knotty and sweaty, scented like fruit and pillow linen. And when Emma scratches down Audrey’s back, half-exposed by her tank top, the skin is smooth, the ant colony gone. The years have all spun away now, and it’s just them again. It’s just Emma. Maybe, it’s always been just her.

But to Emma, it hurts. Audrey can feel it in the way Emma is clutching at her back, the way she is digging her hips into Audrey’s and gasping against her mouth. Old Times Audrey would never do this, but Old Times Audrey doesn’t know what it’s like to need everything to go dark for a little bit. Old Times Audrey doesn’t know what it feels like to kiss someone not because you want them to make you feel whole, but because you need them to keep you from being completely empty. Those feelings will come later.

Audrey tears her lips away.

Emma gasps, tries to reconnect them—but Audrey holds her shoulders. “Emma …”

“Please,” Emma whispers, “ _Please_.” And, God, Audrey’s dreamt about that please. She’s laid in bed for hours at night thinking about that please. She’s woke up sweating and writhing and crying because of that please.

It takes everything she has not to silence it, like she would have in all those dreams, all those fantasies. But the truth is, pain and guilt and emptiness like this never existed back then. The truth is, despite it hurting—when Emma talked about Brian, when Emma took her hand like it meant nothing, when Emma flopped down onto her bed like it was just a couch—there was one thing that Audrey never had to ask herself back then, one thing she never had to decide.

The truth is, back then, Audrey never had to see Emma like this, broken and shattered. She never had to try to save her, or patch her up, or keep her from being empty. And she never had to decide if that was the same thing as falling in love with her.

Emma shrugs out of Audrey’s grasp, leaning down to press her lips to Audrey’s neck now, harshly, feverishly. When she feels Emma’s teeth, Audrey gasps. Her whole body is warm and burning, her hips grinding against Emma’s on their own accord. Emma is making sounds Audrey’s never heard before—not like this anyway, not in the middle of the night, breaking up soft, gray silence and car-shadows.

“Emma,” Audrey says unevenly, trying to still her hips, trying to cool her body down, “Stop.”

“Why?” Emma mewls, pressing herself harder to Audrey, as if trying to scrape together bones.

“This isn’t—you’re not thinking clearly—”

Audrey’s not sure if Emma starts to cry or stills her body first, but suddenly, both have happened. Emma is panting against Audrey’s neck. Her tears are stinging the same spot her teeth scraped against moments ago.

“Emma, I’m sorry, it’s just, I—”

And then Emma is laughing. She’s wiping at her eyes, still sitting on Audrey's lap, laughing.

Audrey can only sit back against the headboard, heart still fluttering, completely and utterly flabbergasted.

“I get it,” Emma whispers, her hands falling down to grip either of Audrey’s thighs. And just at that, Audrey can feel her eyes widening, her body burning up again. “I get that this scares you, Audrey.”

“Emma, it’s not that—I mean, I just think that—”

“You know what I think?” Emma chuckles, and fuck, everything is so different when she laughs and smiles like this. It’s like Audrey can’t think of a single reason she’s not still panting and moaning against Emma’s lips, not still writhing and squirming against her body.

“What?” Audrey breathes.

“I think you need to stop assuming that our story is all about them.” It seems so absurd to reference their conversation last night, after everything, but to Emma, Audrey realizes, this is precisely what she means to say. “I did that, too, but I’m done with it now. This is about you and me, this isn’t about them.”

“Them?”

Emma winces, but she’s not about to cry this time. “Them,” she whispers, “All the people that died, all the people that won’t look at me in town anymore. Them.”

Audrey reaches up to push a strand of hair behind Emma’s ear, and Emma closes her eyes.

“It wasn’t your fault, Em,” Audrey whispers.

Emma swallows hard, nodding. “I know,” she says, “But what happened between us was.”

Then Emma opens her eyes, doe-like and Gatorade-blue in the darkness, and Audrey is speechless.

“It’s okay. You don’t have to say anything back. I just—I’m tired of apologizing for all the things I couldn’t control, I’m tired of feeling guilty for all that shit when the only person who actually deserved an apology from me was you. And you never got it.”

Something generic and polite squirms around in Audrey’s mouth, but she can’t bring herself to let it out. She’s just mesmerized by Emma’s eyes and the sincerity of her words.

“ _That’s_ the story, Audrey,” Emma says, “It’s me and you. _That’s_ the only one I care about fixing.”

It isn’t until now that Audrey can finally believe it, can finally see it in her eyes. This isn’t about the kids in the hallways, or the customers at the Lounge, or the parents at the viewings. This isn’t even about Riley, or Will, or Rachel, or Nina—this is about them. This is what could’ve been said months ago, beside Brooke’s pool, in the chlorine-air. And it’s not what Audrey thought it would be.

Audrey brushes the hair out of Emma’s face and the tears off of her cheeks, pulls her against her chest and draws circles on her shoulders. She mutters into her neck, “And you called _me_ melodramatic.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you've gotten to this point—and, well, you know, actually read it, of course—then, thank you. You're awesome. Feedback is always appreciated if you have the spare time.


End file.
